


The Mender

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27804646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: Castiel has learned a great deal about putting pieces together.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 35
Kudos: 96
Collections: 2020 Supernatural Reversebang Challenge





	The Mender

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SPN Reverse Big Bang for Goblin/Undici's [gorgeous art.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27804838)
> 
> Thanks to themegalosaurus for braving a chaotic draft.

He finds their heads on the last battlefield. 

Being God is irritatingly limiting. As an angel he could have tracked them easily. They are, after all, no longer attached to their inscribed ribs. As God he has to search an unedifying wasteland of torn pages, lurid covers, and dispersed, once-significant objects. It’s his job, now, to bring order to this. 

He won’t make it a story. He won’t gather up the torn pages. He will not be Chuck. Instead he commands grass and dandelions, poplar saplings, bindweed, granite boulders. A landscape shapes itself behind him. A crow flaps up from one of the newly created branches with a rasping cry. Castiel continues to trudge forward. He could survey the plain with divine vision, but one misses things that way.

He stumbles on Sam’s head first. The hair is tangled. Castiel knots his fingers in it and picks up the head. He wonders what he is going to do with it. Burning? Burial? 

“So that’s what the hair was for. Dunno why I never thought of just lugging you around by it, Sammy.”

Castiel starts so violently he almost drops the head, despite the dense strands wound around his fingers. He spins and sees Dean’s head, just a few feet away. Talking.

“Probably because you were too short,” retorts the head in Castiel’s hand. Sam’s voice.

Castiel sets Sam’s head down, very carefully, next to Dean’s. Perhaps he is having hallucinations. That had happened after he took on Sam’s madness, before. He wonders how the world will arrange itself around a God who hallucinates.

“What are you?” he asks the heads. 

“What does it look like we are?” says Dean. “Sam here might have had aspirations towards talking headhood, but let me tell you, it sucks.”

“Talking heads?” says Castiel cautiously. That seems obvious. Dean may be making fun of him.

“It’s like, you know, on news shows, when they bring in expert commentators, they just show them from the shoulders up. It’s the heads talking. So, talking heads.”

Castiel is not sure the world still contains television, let alone television news. But hearing Sam earnestly explain inapplicable information of which he assumes Castiel ignorant is soothing. Perhaps it soothes Dean, too, because his head doesn’t retort. Castiel hears the crow caw again in the distance.

“Where is the rest of you?” he asks. He had begun to accommodate himself to the need to care for a world without Winchesters, without Dean. Now he has these disconcerting fragments. The universe begins to rearrange itself around them.

“Fucked if I know,” says Dean’s head.

“Uh,” says Sam’s, “lots of places, I think. It feels like.”

“What places?” says Castiel, but Sam just wrinkles his forehead thoughtfully. Of course his self-awareness does not extend far enough to be useful.

“What are you doing here, Cas?” says Dean. “What happened, anyway? Did we take Chuck out?”

“Chuck’s fictions are gone. This is a different reality. I’m its God, after a fashion.”

It had seemed as good a way as any of filling his infinite time. And it set Jack free to grow and explore. Castiel cannot regret that, even though his position has just grown more complicated.

“Our new God? Haven’t we been there, done that, ends badly?”

“I’m not your God. I’m a function. It’s really not an exalted position.” 

Behind him Castiel senses the landscape knitting itself elaborately together, insects emerging and chewing the leaves, a small animal with striped fur venturing from its burrow, taken by a hawk. 

Creation and destruction. Castiel will not ask which is responsible for pain. He wouldn’t like the answer. 

“So, if you’re God, who is the Darkness?” says Dean’s head, reading his thoughts.

“Rowena,” says Castiel. “It’s as well she was not an angel in my garrison. She is remarkably adept at rising through the ranks.”

Rowena is frankly enjoying her job. Castiel resents that, but it does give him backup. If he drops everything to deal with this things won’t fall apart. Probably. 

He picks up the heads. Dean’s short hair poses a difficulty. Castiel has to tuck him under his arm. It feels awkwardly intimate. 

“Dude,” says Dean. “Not sure I want my nose in your sweaty God armpit.”

Under some circumstances Castiel might find this arrangement thrilling, or troubling, a testing of desires it would be useless to speak of. Now it’s simply inconvenient. Perhaps Castiel is developing divine impassibility.

“I don’t sweat,” he reminds Dean.

Sam’s head swings almost jauntily from his other hand. Sam’s hair always has been a pleasing feature. 

Castiel starts walking. At length the double awkwardness falls into balance. He’ll take them back to the Bunker. It remains, one of the constants. There he can assess the situation.

The light in the library does them no favors. They look like severed heads, staring eyes and severed vessels. It’s disagreeable. So are their voices, more so than usual. They had bickered, wearyingly, throughout the journey. Whatever allows them to speak — not a mystery to which ascent to godhood has given Castiel the answer — hasn’t troubled to reproduce the proper resonance of lungs and chests.

“What do you think?” says Castiel. 

“Home, sweet home,” says Dean.

“Hey, you got a cat,” says Sam.

“I have several,” says Castiel. He has always thought the Bunker needed a cat. The sleek all-black one jumps onto the table, sniffs at Dean, and retreats disdainfully. Dean’s head sneezes.

“Well, this is just great,” says Dean. “What are you going to do with us, put us on the mantlepiece? Are you sure the cats won’t eat us?”

“Are we even sure we’re us?” says Sam. 

“A part of you,” says Castiel. “Yes, I’m sure.” No replica could be as annoying. “I don’t know whether you can be restored to wholeness, though. I’m sorry.”

“Aren’t you God?”

“Yes,” says Castiel. “That’s the problem.”

Chuck had put them at the center and his worlds had bent around them. Castiel had undertaken to rebuild a world without them. He could never have had what he wanted, anyway. When Chuck’s death tore them from the fabric Castiel had thought there might be purpose, for their ending and his beginning. As God he could put deprivation to use. 

And now he has these obstinate remnants. He can guess where they came from. They exist by his will. He has imposed this partial half-life on his friends. He has put his fragile, chaotic world at risk of being shaped by his desires. 

Sam and Dean’s fixed eyes stare reproachfully at opposite corners of the room.

“I’ll think about it,” Castiel promises. “I’ll bring you on my journeys. I’ll discipline the cats.” 

He makes a start by shooing the small grey one from the table before she can nibble more than a few strands of Sam’s hair.

Walking his creation has been one of Castiel’s pleasures. He likes to see where his world is thriving, where new things are happening. He can make sure it isn’t distorting around any new master narrative. And he likes to talk to people. Though parts of the world are waste there are still a surprising number of humans. They have rebuilt busily over the past century. They have many thoughts, on fate, on God, on good and evil and mosquitos and fried dough. Castiel listens, and marvels, and grieves, and disagrees. He explores growing forests and observes the intricate amalgamation of lichens. He goes home to his cats. It’s easy not to interfere with cats, or lichens. Castiel thinks that he is learning. Surely Sam and Dean will enjoy the journeys as well.

After he starts carrying bloody heads under his arm, though, people largely stop responding to him. 

A father scoops up his screaming daughter and goes into his house, looking back over his shoulder. Castiel turns away.

“I think we’re cramping your style,” says Dean. “And I’m sure as fuck you’re cramping mine. I’m done with the not having a dick and not getting to scratch my own nose. Shit or get off the pot, Cas. Stop lugging us around. Fix us or bury us.”

It’s unjust, Castiel thinks, to keep Dean unwhole lest he once again become Castiel’s whole. It is cutting Dean off from himself and Castiel from his world.

“What do you think, Sam?” he asks.

He’s glad whatever of his will overruled his judgment preserved some part of Sam as well as well as Dean. It gives him the hope of complications. Complications may save him yet. Maybe there is more than one way to keep his wishes in check. 

And for someone spectacularly foolish Sam is sometimes very wise.

“Maybe you should, uh, talk to someone,” says Sam.

Other times Sam is obtuse. Whatever anodyne human therapy he imagines is inapplicable to Castiel’s situation. He will talk to Someone, though. Not for advice. He knows what he’s going to do.

With Rowena Castiel knows where he stands. He respects her; they can work together. And she is fond of Sam and Dean, especially Sam. If he took this to her, she would aid him. Maybe later he’ll ask her advice. But it’s not aid or counsel he needs now.

Billie is older and younger, end and beginning. Castiel needs no justification on her authority, but her cool gaze is another safeguard, a limit. In the end she’ll rule over this, too.

They meet in a tea shop. Though maybe shop isn’t the operative word, since there’s no one to sell. It’s in one of the half-wastes, where there are no people. The place is a simple, slanting tile roof supported by poles, open on three sides. It’s surrounded by bamboo, but the one table holds a Russian samovar. Castiel sits on a bench and sets the heads down, one on each side of him.

Billie sips her tea slowly, looking from Sam to Dean and Dean to Sam. 

“The Winchesters have always been thorns in my side. Having them end as severed heads tucked into your armpits on your cosmic journeyings may just make it all worthwhile.”

“It’s inconvenient,” says Castiel. “Though it’s only Dean I have to tuck under my arm. I carry Sam by the hair.”

It’s true that many tasks have become difficult or impossible without setting the heads down and picking them up again afterwards. Humans make much of their opposable thumbs, but really they should appreciate the range of motion of their arms and shoulders more. For that alone Castiel should be done hesitating.

He might as well come to the point. It’s not as though Billie won’t have guessed it.

“I want to restore them,” he says. “I can find their fragments. I can repair them. I’ve done it often enough, this way or that. But you are Death. You have a right to know of my intentions. As a courtesy.”

Billie puts her cup down.

“You’re eliding a bit, aren’t you, in that slide from right to courtesy. Makes me think maybe you can’t do this without me.”

“Rowena will help me.”

“I can believe Her Darkness would be willing to retrieve certain particular parts of Sam, at least. Tell me, Castiel. Apart from the issue of whether I should break my laws, again, on behalf of two people who can’t exactly plead an unmixed record, why can’t you just make some kind of carrier?”

“I want them whole. If they were gone, all right, I could accept that. I did accept that. I thought it was the condition of my existence. But they shouldn’t be fragmented. I played a part in this. I owe them reparation.”

“We are all fragmented, Castiel. I am part Reaper, part Death. You are part angel, part vessel, part God. Sam and Dean have just taken the metaphor a little too literally.”

Castiel tries a different tack.

“If I gather them, you don’t have to. You would, in the end. I’m saving you time.”

“I have all the time in the world. It’s one of the perks. Shouldn’t it be for you, too?”

“Maybe I’m also taking my fragmentation too literally.”

“Let’s keep this straight. You’re not doing me a favor, you’re asking for one. You killed me once, remember?”

“And you will reap me.”

In truth, Castiel finds it difficult these days to take death — not Death — seriously. He has that in common with Chuck, maybe. It’s possible that if he can get Sam and Dean back they will go right back to killing themselves, and each other, and maybe him, and any goldfish he may adopt in search of more calming company. Though he plans to lay down limits, as he does for the cats. Who would also be destructive of goldfish. He smiles.

“What?” says Billie.

“If I got goldfish, would you reap them?”

“I’d recommend them as pets over Winchesters. But you know what? Thinking of it that way, knock yourself out. Gather your friends. Heal them. Infuse them with your grace. I’m just going to stand back and watch them break your figurines and chew up your slippers.”

“I don’t have figurines,” says Castiel. If he had, the cats would have broken them already. Perhaps that is what Billie doesn’t understand about him.

“If anyone is eating slipper, it’s Sam,” says Dean’s head. Sam’s head sticks its tongue out. 

Billie rolls her eyes.

“Be careful,” she says, serious now. “You may break more significant things than figurines,” and she’s gone.

“Thanks, dude,” says Dean. “You know, for talking to scary Death lady for us and stuff.”

“Do you really know where the rest of us is?” asks Sam.

“I thought at first you would know. Like dowsing. But you said that you didn’t.”

“Dowsing, huh. So you could, like, swing Sam’s head over that battlefield like a metal detector and he’d beep where there’s bits of us.”

“Fuck off, Dean.”

“It wouldn’t work in any case. I’ve been thinking about this. Chuck used you as the point of cohesion. When he … exploded, you were scattered through his world. You won’t be contained on the battlefield.”

“Doesn’t that pretty much mean they’re — we’re — gone? I mean, you remember Anna, uh, offered to do that for me. To me. Whatever. It sounded pretty final.”

“The parts of you wouldn’t be scattered at random, or broken up beyond meaning. Chuck’s laws were narrative. They will be in fitting places.”

“You mean Sammy’s dick will be shriveled up in a library somewhere? That should make it easy.”

“Like Cas even wants to think about where your dick would be.”

“Maybe that Fortuna chick has them. In case we get lucky.”

Like many of Dean’s jokes, this isn’t without merit as a possibility.

“She is still around, isn’t she?” says Sam’s head. “There are still gods?” 

It’s like Sam to be distracted from his own urgent concerns by a tangent. In truth, Castiel is grateful. Talking about Dean’s penis is uncomfortable.

“I’m sure new ones will be brought into being. I look forward to it. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

“What are we, chopped liver?” mutters Dean. 

It’s not so difficult to track them once he sets his mind to it, but it is exhausting. He negotiates with Rowena for one of Dean’s hands and a quantity of Sam’s blood that she holds in the treasury of hell. She drives a hard bargain, but Castiel thinks he gains more than he loses.

“I expect you’ll find Dean’s liver at the nearest cheap liquor store,” she says sweetly at parting. 

Dean’s other hand is easy, in the wreckage of what long ago was Bobby Singer’s ruined workshop. The fingernails and toenails are more difficult. Castiel almost perishes, God that he is, recovering them from Faerie. It is a place inimical to his nature.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters. 

But he retrieves Sam’s long legs, shackled, disturbingly, by his mother’s first grave, and assorted internal organs from locations whose symbolism he prefers not to think about. Sometimes he’s afraid that he’s learning too much about them, that they won’t tolerate his knowing.

It’s only the ribs that cause him serious trouble. 

“Is there anything wrong, Cas?” asks Sam. He and Dean perch on a rack in the infirmary, now, surrounded by trays of organs and small, gruesome piles of limbs.

“Gallbladder gone missing? Prostate on the lam?” asks Dean. He has throughout refused to take the process of reconstruction seriously, even when Castiel was painfully gathering his heart and his brother’s out of the places they’d been given to, disentangling the rubbery veins from one another, unwrapping a tendril that fastened onto his wrist like cold seaweed.

“Lay off, Dean. Cas, you OK?” 

“Don’t mind Sammy. His life without his prostate won’t be worth living.”

“You know that riddle about whether God can make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it?” asks Cas. “It turns out the answer is yes. I need your ribcages. The sigils I put on them once conceal them from me.”

“The sigils were meant to hide us from angels. Why would they work once you’re God?”

“Nonetheless.” He hasn’t been fully able to explain that he carries his earlier states with him, though one would think that they, of all people, would understand.

Dean snickers. 

“You gotta admit, dude, it’s pretty funny,” he says. “Hoist with your own petard.”

“They’re your ribcages. You tell me where the hell you’ve put them,” Castiel says unreasonably. “I want to be done with this.” 

He gestures violently at the accumulated parts. They sicken him suddenly. All those processes, all that matter. They add up to Dean, whom he has never been able to add up. And to Sam, in ungainly addition. He isn’t making anything whole here. He is fragmenting.

“OK, look, I’m sorry I laughed,” says Dean. “Let’s think this through. Got any rib lore, Sam?”

“There’s Adam and Eve,” says Sam. “Or, no, look. What are ribs about, physiologically? Protection. Defense. Keeping the main organs safe.”

“Shelter,” says Castiel. He looks at the two still hearts and the four empty sacs of the lungs. Structures where life is lived. The Bunker itself. Or, no, the car.

The car has rusted in the years since Dean parked it that last time. The white bone is clean and whole in among the corroded metal. Dean will rebuild it, Castiel thinks. When he has restored Dean Dean will come here in turn and make this whole.

He’s sewed them together so many times. Not literally, of course, until now.

“Fuck, that tickles,” says Dean, when Castiel is attaching the soles of his feet, and “Dude, getting a little personal, there,” when Castiel is working on his genitalia. “You going to just lie there while Cas sews up your junk?” Dean asks the ceiling or, presumably, Sam. Castiel has kept them in the same room, though each is enclosed in his own circle of chalked sigils. 

“Should be easier when it’s my turn,” says Sam. “I mean, it’s got to be less fiddly when you have something bigger to work with.”

Dean gives Sam the finger. Castiel had reattached his hands yesterday.

Castiel ignores them. Of course the bickering goes on. Dean and Sam tear apart and patch themselves back together, in ways small and great. They mend in these petty abrasions. Castiel pierces their skin again and again, drawing edges together, tying off ends. It’s satisfying, meditative. His grace runs along the seams, binding him to them. Their voices sink into the background, like the chatter of birds when he walks in the woods. He has no need to listen. But he thinks he has made a difference. Their voices have fulness, body. That makes a difference. They were never meant to subsist as talking heads. 

Castiel will simply have to adjust to living again around some troublesome contours. 

“We look like Frankenstein,” Dean says.

Castiel has broken the chalk circles and given them food. Even Dean has left most of the burger on his plate. It will take time, returning to bodily life. Castiel has brought down a mirror to show them his handiwork. Dean is eyeing it with disfavor.

“Frankenstein wasn’t the monster, he was the guy who made the monster,” says Sam. He turns his hands over, palm and back, examining the lines of stitches.

“It’s good I have hands again so’s I can kill you. This time even Cas will never find the body.”

“It’s good to have feet so I can kick your ass,” says Sam. 

Then they’re wrestling and chasing each other, dodging around tables, knocking over Castiel’s careful cart of needles and threads.

 _You have always been like this,_ Castiel thinks, looking at Dean’s flesh criss-crossed by his seams. _It’s beautiful._

It’s very difficult to stop watching.

“What did you expect, Castiel?”

Rowena has offered him tea, too. There must be something about him that makes the Powers offer tea. Castiel accepts it dubiously. Whatever else Rowena is, she is still a witch. 

He sips. It’s a smoky Lapsang Souchong, and it’s excellent. Castiel wonders where she gets it. He hasn’t come across any in his travels.

“This, more or less,” he says. “I’m not asking for advice. I just needed someone to know. I needed to say it. I’m in love with Dean.”

“Pygmalion is a tedious myth. Can I put in a bid for Sam, if you’re taking offers for your artwork? Assuming you’ve done a competent job reassembling the physique.”

“Sam is looking very well,” says Castiel. “I am not Pygmalion. This has been a … longstanding issue. Don’t think I don’t know it’s impossible. Dean is centered on Sam. And I am God. I cannot, will not bend the world around my obsessions. I won’t tell a story about Sam and Dean. I won’t be my father. It’s something that I want that I can’t have, that’s all. I’ve made them whole. I’ve given them back each other in wholeness. I can endure exclusion.”

Rowena looks at him with something like compassion. 

“Martyrdom is a very Winchester trait. But might I suggest that even Sam and Dean, given the choice between martyrdom and some quite excellent sex, might choose the latter? Why shouldn’t you?”

“I love Dean. I care deeply for Sam. Sex would only be complicated. It would be a disaster.”

“Threesomes are always complicated. And you can sleep with someone, you know, or enter into dramatic and volatile relationships, without it being some destined story. Even Sam and Dean might have figured that out. Don’t be afraid of want. It will find its own balance. Even for a God.”

“You forget that I’ve known Sam and Dean longer than you. I’m more experienced at divinity, as well.”

Rowena lays her hand on his. It’s cool and pleasant.

“And even more experienced, maybe, at being taken apart and put back together.”

“We’ve all been resurrected.”

“Yes, and it’s very aging, if you don’t manage it carefully. Well. Whatever else, do remind Sam and Dean to moisturize. Being pretty is most of what they offer the universe to compensate for their catastrophic decisions.”

Castiel does not pass on this reminder. Sam and Dean seem to settle in well enough without a skincare regimen. Sam starts a garden. Dean works on the car. They both travel some, without Castiel. He sees the reflection of his new world in their eyes when they return. Sam pulls down books, mostly about natural history, and researches. Dean gets out old roadmaps, matching them to new landscapes, and plays music on archaic machinery. Dean gives him looks, and Sam asks questions.

“Will we die, Cas?”

Sam doesn’t sound either angry or apprehensive. Castiel gives him the answer he’s guessed.

“Not of old age,” he says, “and you’re much less likely these days to get stabbed.”

“Or shot,” says Sam.

“Or have your throat cut, be torn by hellhounds, or afflicted with a supernatural wasting disease,” Castiel enumerates. “And I’m not intending to allow, let alone engineer, a situation in which either of you can or must sacrifice himself for my world.” 

Castiel’s narrative preferences are quite different from Chuck’s, even if he hadn’t sworn off narrative preference. Especially for Sam and Dean. That’s what Rowena won’t understand. Reconstructing them was not a narrative preference.

“I just want to die in bed at ninety, shot by a jealous husband,” says Dean.

Castiel believes no part of that sentiment. It is one of those things that Dean says. But if Dean’s true desire is to go down in battle — again — there may be difficulties.

“You may … change your state, in time,” Castiel says. “Or simply change. I honestly do not know.”

“And then what?” says Sam. “We aren’t human, now, are we? Heaven?”

“Heaven is for the angels, now. I freed the souls.” It had been one of his first acts, before he started exploring what had become of Earth. Before he found Sam and Dean on the battlefield.

“You what?” says Dean. “Cas, what the hell? Where are they now? Where is Mom? Dad?”

“We’ve, all of us, been imprisoned in ourselves by angels. It seemed to me that heaven was not so different. It’s not good to be locked in memories. I released the souls.”

“But where did they go? Are they just … gone?”

“I don’t know,” says Castiel. 

He can’t, or doesn’t, tell Dean that he had seen the souls depart, like bees swarming, that for a while after he could hear them still in the distance, hung in a humming cluster on a branch of the galaxies.

“Did you give them a choice? Stay or go?”

Maybe he should have done. Maybe he should have spent an eternity traveling from cell to cell, testing souls, instead of spending a mere few decades searching for Winchester body parts. 

“No,” he says. 

Sam walks out. Dean paces up and down.

“That was my mom, Cas. Our mom. You had no fucking right. I dunno, dude. I’m just. I’m not sure I can get past this.”

“Mary was a human soul,” Castiel says. “That is more fundamental than being your mother. Or Sam’s mother.” Though Sam has not stayed to castigate him. He leaves that to Dean. “I tried to do what seemed right. I can’t apologize for that.”

Though probably he will, eventually. And Dean, whatever he says now, will get past this. For now he clenches his fist, then swings around abruptly and strides out in the opposite direction from Sam.

It’s a familiar rupture. It will be a familiar mending. Castiel thinks about that during the days that follow, when Sam is doubtfully silent, when Dean grudgingly begins to throw casual remarks his way again. When Sam says one night, “I just wanted you to know, Cas, that I, uh, that I get it,” before sealing the matter in rock never to be spoken again, and Dean finally tells him “Heaven did blow. You got that much right,” before planting the issue to shadow their conversations with rustling grudges, perpetually renewing and decaying into forgiving leaf mold. 

Rowena is right. These things aren’t a destined narrative. They are more like Castiel’s lichens, or the subterranean fungi that communicate between trees. Maybe he isn’t his Father. Maybe what he is is not a temptation. Perhaps there are ways to communicate across separation.

He knocks, one night, on the door of the room where Sam and Dean have been having sex. 

Of course he knows that they do this. Even if they had not before, what could he expect of them now? He has placed them here like Adam and Eve in the garden. Commerce has grown up again around the small town near the Bunker, clustering around Sam and Dean’s human lives the way wild grapes, flocks of starlings, and colonies of muskrats spring up in Castiel’s wake when he walks in the wilderness. But Sam and Dean are isolated, originary. Of course they couple.

Castiel has paced the halls of the Bunker before this, like that other God walking the paths of Eden in the cool of the evening (except with more gnashing of teeth), and listened to the noises from Dean’s room. That had been foolish. Rowena would be right to laugh at him. Now he will hazard something. Perhaps he will get lucky.

He says a brief prayer to Fortuna — why not? — and walks into the startled silence. 

They are beautiful. His seamwork traces their flesh, joining borders. It gleams. Their limbs are tangled and separated in elaborate patterns. 

Dean is especially beautiful.

“Dude,” Dean says, “knock.”

“I did,” says Castiel. “He did,” says Sam, simultaneously. 

“And then you came in. Kind of missing the point, Cas.”

Castiel swallows.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t miss the point.”

He can’t imagine why he feared that he would be too much the God, coming to this scene. He feels inept, and desirous. The room smells of Sam’s sweat. Castiel’s eyes are fixed on Dean, but the scent arouses him. He imagines coming to Dean, through Sam. 

Now Dean looks amused. Castiel has always loved the way the lines gather around his eyes when he smiles, the mortal joy of it.

“Hell of a way to proposition us,” he says. “Assuming that’s why you’re standing here staring.”

That doesn’t sound exactly flattering, but it’s not a rejection. Castiel swallows. Then he steps forward and kneels in front of the bed. 

“I’m,” he says. His mouth is dry. His face is beside Dean’s dangling leg. There’s a scatter of gold freckles, even there, under the short dark-gold hairs, beside the line of stitches. He can hear Sam breathing, somewhere to the side. A presence, essential in his own way. He will take them as they are, if they will take him as he is. “I’m asking, Dean. Sam, you as well. This is something I want. Something I’ve wanted very badly, for a long time. I’m asking whether I can have it. You can say no, of course.”

Doubtless this is the most ridiculous way possible of broaching the matter. But at least it’s unmistakable. Castiel bows his head and waits. He doesn’t want to see Dean’s expression.

Then Dean’s hands are pulling him to his feet and tugging at his clothes. 

“Can’t believe you wore the fucking trenchcoat for this,” he mutters. Then he stops and looks in Castiel’s eyes and Castiel’s heart leaps. “You’re welcome here with us,” he says. “You’re welcome with me, you get that? And with Sam. None of this lonely God crap. You can come in. You get that, right? You can fucking come in. So don’t you ever go down on your knees again. Cause you don’t have to ask, OK?” 

“Yes,” says Castiel. With Dean it will always be _us_. It will always be _and Sam_. It will never be an exact requital. And Castiel can live with that. He can even use it. One must be off balance, between step and step in a dance. One must be unwhole, to join with anything.

“Sam,” he says.

“Uh,” says Sam. “Look. It’s, uh, like Dean says. You’re welcome here. But I can, you know. I can give you guys some space.”

“That would be inconvenient,” says Castiel. “You’re an essential part of my plans.”

“Plans, is it?” says Dean. “Bossy. You’ve got some moves, Cas. Doesn’t he have moves, Sammy?”

Castiel can still smell Sam’s sweat. There is desire here, and fondness. There are Dean’s eyes on them. He thinks of moving through Sam, to Dean. The image is a fire along his senses. Dean is growing hard. Castiel can allow himself to stare. He has permission. 

“You sure, Cas?” says Sam.

“I’m sure,” says Castiel.

Castiel goes out at first light and sits in front of the Bunker. He’s done what he’s done. It wasn’t a disaster. Though now there will be conversations. 

Sam is up first, as usual. He brings a cup of coffee outside and sits beside Castiel. 

“I enjoyed yesterday evening,” says Castiel. Surely that is a polite acknowledgment, though it seems inadequate to the memory of Dean’s semen splattering over his hand. He looks down involuntarily at his own fingers.

Sam frowns at his coffee and says nothing. 

“Perhaps you did not,” says Castiel, though Sam had spilled his seed, too, had seemed to take pleasure in Castiel bringing him to his climax.

“No, I did. It was, uh, great. It meant, it meant a lot to me. To you, too. Being with Dean. I could see that. I just, I want us all to be clear about stuff.”

“What stuff?” says Castiel.

“Us,” says Sam. “You’re in love with Dean. You’re not in love with me, not that way.”

Castiel glances at Sam. He looks thoughtful, perhaps, but not distressed. 

“I love you. In love, no. That’s true. And you are essential to Dean in ways I am not,” Castiel says. If he and Sam are for some reason competing for the short end of the stick he is not going to give Sam an easy victory.

“Believe me, Cas, that’s a lot more of a problem for me than it is for you.”

This time Sam speaks with feeling. Castiel could remind him once more that this is his universe, not Chuck’s, that Sam will not again find himself at the receiving end of Dean’s sacrifices. Castiel can and will prevent that. But Sam might not believe him. He seems determined to have problems.

“You’re wallowing,” says Castiel. “You could at least give me a turn.” With the wallowing. With being the center of Dean’s universe. 

“It’s a human thing. Better leave it to humans. We’ve tried a God with a grievance. It got dangerous.”

“You just want everything to yourself.” Sam spends so much time ruthlessly culling his wants that it’s hard to remember exactly how efficient he is at getting them. Castiel admires that about him.

“Not everything. Just this. Nice day. Coffee with grody creamer and a dash of self-pity. I might go for a run later and get a croissant and some proper half & half. Hey, it’s cool, Cas. We’re good. I, uh. I like what we have. Really. I just want it to be what it is. Real.”

It is a nice day, Castiel supposes. The sun is warm and pleasant. Its conflagration tugs at Castiel’s awareness, the swing of its planets, complex gravitation ruling fields of debris. He could wander off that far so easily. Farther. 

He stays where he is, watching Sam’s hand grip his coffee cup. The line of stitches stands out clearly across his wrist. Are any of them getting exactly what they want? But they’re getting enough, together. Maybe loving isn’t about _everything_. Maybe it’s about enough, and together.

Dean wanders out of the Bunker in his bathrobe, holding a piece of toast.

“Morning, Sunshine,” he says. He leans his elbows on Castiel’s shoulders and grins down at him. 

Castiel feels the heat of him all along his back, far stronger than the sun. Toast crumbs are dropping from Dean’s mouth into Castiel’s hair. Dean is most certainly doing that on purpose. Affectionate annoyance is a third warmth, holding Castiel.

Yes, this is wholeness, this imperfect sufficiency.

“Hello, Dean,” says Castiel.


End file.
